Whitney Arminte Way and Charles Frederick Stewart are to be married Jan. 20 at the Ocotillo Golf Course in Chandler, Ariz. John Kavanaugh, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, is to officiate.
The bride, who is 28 and taking her husband’s name, is a Google Cloud marketing manager for the Intel Corporation, a multinational technology company in Santa Clara, Calif. She graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and received an M.B.A. from Texas A&M University-Commerce.
She is a daughter of Kelly P. Way and George A. Way, both of Chicago. The bride’s father retired as a first sergeant in the United States Army. He was last stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Her mother is an advanced registered nurse for the State of Illinois in Warrenville.
The groom, 35, is to begin working next month as a shared services manager at Workday, a financial management and human capital management software vendor based in Pleasanton, Calif. He is part of Workday’s career accelerator program for military veterans. Until November, he served as a major on active duty at Fort Meade in Maryland, and will continue to serve as a reservist in Upland, Calif. He graduated from the University of New Mexico and received an M.B.A. from Emory University.
He is a son of Katrine H. Stewart and David C. Stewart of Albuquerque. The groom’s father, a career diplomat, retired as the consul general at the United States embassy in London.
Ms. Way and Mr. Stewart met in September 2015 at the National Black M.B.A. Conference in Orlando, Fla., while both waited to be interviewed by the same company for the same job. At the time, she was working in marketing for Southwest Airlines in Dallas and he was studying for his M.B.A. at Emory in Atlanta.
“She was gorgeous,” Mr. Stewart said. “I was completely taken with her beautiful, confident smile.”
Ms. Way was looking at things a bit differently: “I saw him as the competition for a job I wanted.” She said she thought he “seemed funny and confident and sure of himself, and he was very handsome.”
But she was not to be distracted by small talk. At day’s end, the company invited all of those who had been interviewed to nearby happy hour, where Mr. Stewart and a few of his classmates from Emory gathered, along with Ms. Way, who had gone to the conference alone.
When Mr. Stewart tried reapproaching Ms. Way, all he got was that smile again.
“She kind of ignored me,” he said with a sigh. “She was too busy talking to recruiters, still trying to get that job.”
He retreated back to his classmates, one of whom said, “Oh man, Charles, that was rough.”
As the happy hour wound down, Mr. Stewart and his fellow classmates were milling around and discussing plans for later that evening to attend what was billed as a “Southern hip-hop dance party” at a nearby events space called Grits & Biscuits.
When Mr. Stewart turned toward the door, he found Ms. Way standing directly in front of him.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked him, flashing that confident smile once more.
Mr. Stewart was stunned.
“All I could think of was saying yes before she changed her mind,” he said.
They went back to the hotel where the conference was held for a few drinks, and then they went to the hip-hop dance.
When it was over, he took her back to her hotel in a taxi, and they shared a first kiss before Mr. Stewart, flashing his own confident smile, said to Ms. Way: “I could see this being our last first date. I could see myself marrying you.”
She laughed, but two weeks later, she visited him at Emory, and he returned the favor by meeting her in Austin, Tex., to take her to dinner.
By then, both knew they did not get the job in Orlando but were too busy working on a long-distance relationship to hardly care. Two years later, on a trip to New Mexico, he asked her to marry him.
“Whitney’s my best friend, my life, my future,” he said. “When I think of her, I think of family, I think of home.”
